Quote

Life is first boredom, then fear. Whether or not we use it, it goes, And leaves what something hidden from us chose, And age, and then the only end of age.

Philip Larkin

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Philip Larkin
Age: 63 †
Born: 1922
Born: August 9
Died: 1985
Died: December 2
Critic
Journalist
Librarian
Music Critic
Music Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Coventry
England
UK
Philip Arthur Larkin
Firsts
Aging
First
Leaves
Something
Goes
Life
Age
Whether
Use
Chose
Fear
Boredom
Ends
Hidden

More quotes by Philip Larkin

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Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? Six days of the week it soils With its sickening poison-- Just for paying a few bills! That's out of proportion.
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The difficult part of love Is being selfish enough.
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Life is first boredom, then fear.
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I think we got much better poetry when it was all regarded as sinful or subversive, and you had to hide it under the cushion when somebody came in.
Philip Larkin
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
Philip Larkin
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In everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived according to love.
Philip Larkin
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To start at a new place is always to feel incompetent & unwanted.
Philip Larkin
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One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the dame day as we do ourselves.
Philip Larkin
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I am awakened each dawn Increasingly to fear.
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The poetic impulse is distinct from ideas about things or feelings about things, though it may use these. It's more like a desire to separate a piece of one's experience & set it up on its own, an isolated object never to trouble you again, at least not for a bit. In the absence of this impulse nothing stirs.
Philip Larkin
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Philip Larkin
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The trees are coming into leaf Like something almost being said.
Philip Larkin
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Many famous feet have trod Sublunary paths, and famous hands have weighed The strength they have against the strength they need And famous lips interrogated God Concerning franchise in eternity.
Philip Larkin
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Living in England has no such excuse: These are my customs and establishments.
Philip Larkin
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One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.
Philip Larkin
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Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death- Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.
Philip Larkin
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Still, vicious or virtuous, Love suits most of us.
Philip Larkin
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You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.
Philip Larkin
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He married a woman to stop her getting away Now she's there all day.
Philip Larkin
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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
Philip Larkin